Deployment of pioneers
A selection of pioneers and leaders discuss the deployment of pioneers in the Church of England and how to free them up to pioneer.
Includes contributions from Tim Yau, Mark Broomhead, Christian Selvaratnam, Mike Pilavachi, Rowan Williams, Graham Cray, Christina Baxter, Yvonne Richmond, Steven Croft, Cathy Rowling, Pete Hughes and Harry Steele.
Low-quality preview – downloadable version is higher quality.
Pioneer training
A selection of pioneers and leaders discuss training for pioneer ministry in the Church of England.
Includes contributions from Pete Hughes, Jennifer Middleton, Tim Yau, Steven Croft, Annie Kirke, Ben Norton, Christina Baxter, Graham Cray, Graham Tomlin, Tim Sudworth, Mark Broomhead, Stephen Cottrell, George Kovoor, Cris Rogers, Cathy Rowling and Harry Steele.
Low-quality preview – downloadable version is higher quality.
Pioneer selection
A group of pioneers and leaders discuss selection for pioneer ministry in the Church of England and what makes a good pioneer.
Includes contributions from Pete Hughes, Mike Pilavachi, Annie Kirke, Amy and Frog Orr-Ewing, Mark Broomhead, Steven Croft, Rowan Williams, Yvonne Richmond, Michael Volland, Christina Baxter, Cathy Rowling, Graham Cray, Stephen Ferns, Ben Norton, Jennifer Middleton, Christian Selvaratnam, Tim Yau and Tim Sudworth.
Low-quality preview – downloadable version is higher quality.
Pioneering
A selection of pioneers and leaders discuss pioneering in the Church of England.
Includes contributions from Harry Steele, Ben Edson, Jill Duff, Tim Yau, Mike Pilavachi, Tim Sudworth, Amy and Frog Orr-Ewing, Michael Volland, Nick Bury, John Sentamu, Cris Rogers, Christian Selvaratnam, Yvonne Richmond, Graham Cray, Gareth Powell, Stephen Ferns, Pete Hughes, Jennifer Middleton, Steven Croft, Ben Norton and Rowan Williams.
Low-quality preview – downloadable version is higher quality.
This is an exciting time for St Peter's in the Pub, Lincoln. It has been commissioned as a distinct congregation by St Peter in Eastgate Church and from October it will start to meet weekly instead of once a month. Its leader, Revd Nick Alexander, explains more.
St Peter's in the Pub started in October 2008 to serve a new, growing community in the Carlton Estate and Bunker's Hill area of Lincoln where, previously, there was no church or church building. St Peter in Eastgate Church had been looking at how best to reach that new community and St Peter's in the Pub was the result of several years of research, community engagement, and listening to local people.
Much of what we did took shape after I attended a mission shaped ministry course in the city. As a result, we organised events, carried out a community survey and started a café church service.
With the help of a consultant recommended by the msm team, our PCC matched the survey's findings with what we had to offer at St Peter in Eastgate. This led to the launch of a parent and toddler group at the estate's Lincolnshire Poacher pub which proved to be very popular. We later ran an Alpha Course on the back of our first Craft Creations evening, also at the Poacher.
The initiative is generally reaching folk who are 'coming back to church' after a while away but we are also seeing a small number of completely unchurched people coming to faith as well.
Almost three years ago, we started St Peter's in the Pub on the first Sunday of the month and we now regularly welcome over 65 adults and about 15 children. The idea has always been to keep everything simple, starting off with coffee and croissants at 10am and having a crèche for pre-schoolers as well as activities for older children during the service.
We run lots of other regular activities as well. These include our weekly parent and toddler group Family Hour which runs on Wednesdays in term time and a similar event once a month on a Saturday morning called Family Time. We have strong links with a local sheltered housing scheme and run Songs of Praise & Tea there once a month. We also have a number of weekday fellowship groups.
In the summer we hold an outdoor community event. This year it took the form of an Inflatables Day at the Carlton Boulevard sports ground. We had Sumo suits, bungee run, inflatable boxing ring, gladiator duel and a bouncy castle alongside a free BBQ – the event attracted over 500 people. As well as providing a great community event for the Carlton area, the aim was to publicise a Christian youth event called 'The Bank' at the Lincoln City football ground. We also hosted two special Christians in Sport evenings at Yarborough Leisure Centre and hundreds of flyers were given out.
We were granted a Bishop's Mission Order in February of this year. This has expanded the geographical area that we are licensed by the Diocese to work in and provides us with even greater opportunities to share the Gospel with others.
Our continued vision at St Peter's in the Pub is to see the emergence of a Christian community welcoming and serving the people of the Carlton Estate and Bunker's Hill areas. We are looking to achieve this through a range of community-building activities, evangelistic events, Bible study, fellowship and our times together at the Lincolnshire Poacher.
From October we will begin meeting every week with a whole-church joint celebration at Eastgate at the end of every month. We will also have the opportunity to come together once a month for an evening Praise & Prayer meeting.
Earlier this year the vicar of St Peter in Eastgate, Revd Edward Bowes-Smith, set out the Church Council's 'Vision for Mission' for St Peter's. The idea centres on being one church family (St Peter's) with a variety of different congregations – including St Peter's in the Pub – each with their own worship styles and mission priorities.
The new arrangements began with the commissioning of St Peter's in the Pub on 18th September 2011 and the first whole-church celebration on 25th September 2011 was a Confirmation Service. The fact remains that wherever we are and however many times we meet, what we value remains the same, namely Worship, Word, Witness, Welcome and Work.
Families are flocking to the church centre in Dorset, for a breakfast with a difference but there's more than bacon butties and sizzling sausages on the menu – says Chris Tebbutt, Rector of Canford Magna Church.
I'd been at Canford for about a year when I thought, 'How can we attract young families into our excellent but rather "mature" 1030am service?'
Years ago this was a sleepy little place but in 1971, at a time of charismatic revival, John Collins became our Vicar. He was prepared to take a few risks and before long this church became a huge magnet for people. At that time many hi-tech industries were coming into Poole and two very large housing estates were built close by. As a result the parish grew from 500 to 12,000 and we planted two daughter churches, The Lantern at Merley and St Barnabas, Bearwood.
So when I came here as team rector, I knew that Canford Magna was a special place but I really did wonder how we could rebalance the age profile of the church. What could we do?
I went to a Deanery Chapter meeting where someone from the outlying villages talked about their monthly Breakfast Church. What a great idea I thought – I can nick that! So I discussed it with my wife Sandra and Children's Worker, Sharon, and we worked with a design agency on a logo. It was then that Sandra came up with the name Breakfast@9, deliberately not mentioning 'church' because we didn't want to put people off. We also decided that rather than re-instituting the 8am Book of Common Prayer service every week – which had become monthly during the interregnum – we should instead hold a new service at 9am in our Church Centre and call it Breakfast@9.
We started off by inviting mums attending the church's playgroup with their children and it's just grown from there. Unlike Messy Church, which tends to run monthly, we wanted Breakfast@9 to take place every Sunday because if you miss a Messy Church session it means you don't see the Messy Church community for eight weeks. We wanted to avoid that and instead build a community of people who regularly met together.
So far, it's going a storm with whole families coming regularly, about 40 to 50 parents and children each week. In the first week of August, traditionally such a quiet time, we peaked at 67 mums, dads and their children.
We set everything up the night before and have three cooking teams. The helpers and worship team get together after setting up to pray. Then the team on duty arrive at about 8am on the Sunday and they then start preparing those all important bacon butties and sausages. We also bought an espresso machine to make sure the coffee was as good as it could be – and we have croissants, fruit, toast and cereals available. By about 8.50am the first people begin to drift in and the great thing is that we are consistently getting Dads along as well – I'm not sure whether the bacon butties have got something to do with that!
We have tables in café style though we now put tables together because we noticed that people weren't talking to each other. By putting two tables side by side, the families began to chat a lot more. We also have members of our congregation who are simply there to sit and chat and lend a helping hand, particularly with those mums who are maybe struggling to cope with kids on their own.
Breakfast is from 9am to 9.20, then I'll welcome everybody. We generally have one or two new people there every week. I'll also mention what the theme of the service is; we're using E100 by Scripture Union, 100 essential readings from the Bible.
We cover the Old Testament in the autumn term beginning with our creator God and on to the coming of Christ when we encourage people to come along to a Christmas Eve crib service. In the New Year we move to the story of Jesus and then after Easter the coming of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the church – yes, eventually we do use the 'church' word!
After hearing the theme for the day, we then have three worship songs. All the info is on a big 50" plasma screen with a young person operating the laptop. Music is quite important to us and we tend to do a selection of lively songs that are a mixture of popular contemporary worship songs with one 'kids-friendly' song. The main thing is that all – both young and old – can clap or use our selection of percussion instruments to shake along to the music.
After a reading, the service leader will then do a five minute thought for the day – it may be me or it may be one of the people running Breakfast@9. We try to make it interactive but, whatever we do, we don't pull any punches and we don't try to apologise. So the breakdown of each session is 10 minutes of music, five minute reading, five minute talk, 10 minute craft topic, followed by a short 'show and tell' if applicable, short prayer – about thought for the day and prayer for other people – then a final worship song and a blessing. It's all over by 10am on the dot. We never overrun. That's important. We will encourage people to stay and pray or chat but there's no pressure to do so.
In what was an exciting development, we put on an Exploring Baptism event and showed a DVD about baptism to a number of interested families. We chatted individually to people to ask if that was what they wanted or whether they would prefer to have a thanksgiving service. One mum said she wanted to get baptised (and confirmed) herself so that was arranged – in Salisbury Cathedral no less – and the day afterwards her son was one of two children baptised in the parish church. She and her family were thrilled by that event and a number of Breakfast@9 families came to the service. That mum is now one of those who does readings at Breakfast@9.
There is no magic formula as to what's happening. We're just taking it one step at a time and are looking to form a Breakfast@9 housegroup led by a young Christian couple who have become very much part of the team.
I am so blessed because members of the parish church have been so supportive. The people are amazing; they are serving, helping, putting money in and not necessarily seeing a return. This sort of thing is a big investment.
Others looking to start something like this might ask themselves, 'Have you got people with a real heart to reach out to the unchurched?' I'm impressed by the way the Canford folk both serve in teams and are prepared to bankroll the costs of running Breakfast@9 in the Church Centre even though they don't see these new people in the pews in the 1,000 year old Parish Church.
Many would love to see all those families in the pews but I think they now realise that Breakfast@9 really is church to those families. However we do try and encourage our Breakfast@9 families to come together with the main church and the daughter churches for the bigger festivals because it reminds them that they are part of something much bigger.
Our primary objective is to form a completely new community as most of our attendees are unchurched or people who have had a church experience before but drifted away. On the few occasions where we've mixed the services – Breakfast@9 and 10.30 – it hasn't really worked. So we feel the Holy Spirit is saying that we should press on with something completely new.
GLO Church in Offerton, near Stockport, was awarded a Bishop's Mission Order earlier this year – the first BMO in the Diocese of Chester. Its licensed lay workers Gareth and Lizzy Robinson give an update on how it's getting on.
The consultation process to become a BMO had been going on for over a year. In March, the Bishop of Stockport, Rt Revd Robert Atwell, issued the Order on behalf of the Bishop of Chester, Rt Revd Dr Peter Forster and he commissioned a team of eight to work with us. GLO (God Loves Offerton) is a mission project from All Saints' Marple, and our team will reinforce the ministry in two large housing estates as we look to establish a Christian community there.
GLO's commissioning service took place at All Saints and it was great to see it publicly welcomed by vicar Ian Parkinson; Alan Bell, Rural Dean of Stockport; Mrs Lois Haslam, lay chair of Stockport Deanery Synod – as well as a local police inspector and a community worker.
The Bishop of Stockport said that we need to encourage mission partnerships across traditional Anglican boundaries of parishes and deaneries. It is all credit to him for really getting the whole thing off the ground because he saw that something needed to happen and made the decision to go for it.
Our focus is to the east of Offerton where the two housing estates have completely separate cultures and identities – in many ways. One estate is made up of some social and some private housing and the other comprises privately owned housing stock; there isn't even a road to link them together.
We meet for worship on a Sunday afternoon in a local primary school but GLO Church is offering lots of different sorts of opportunities to be involved in it and build community as a result. One such opportunity is The Young Mums Way – a group for Offerton mums under 21 years old. It runs every Wednesday afternoon during term time at a local Children's Centre.
We also provide New Life Packs, including nappies, wipes and babygrows, as our way of saying welcome to the world for newborns. The Garage is developing into our freecycle project, a place where unwanted but useful things can find a home until someone needs them. The idea is that if you need something and we have it, you're welcome to it. We hope to make it useful for anyone and everyone.
In August we organised a Serve Week so that we could serve the community of Offerton through things like car washing, gardening, litter picking and sorting The Garage. We feel very privileged to be working alongside the police and the council; they are extremely supportive of GLO. We were invited as 'stakeholders' in Offerton to be part of a meeting with all of the interested agencies to look at the Urban Priority Area plan. I was amazed to see that all of the Plan's aims could clearly be seen as signs of God's Kingdom. It was also amazing to know that we arrived just as the local authority started to draw in the community's 'leaders' to change the face of this area and improve it as a place to live. They know that we at GLO are an extremely motivated volunteer force and that has to be a good thing! We've had the opportunity to pray and talk with council workers; I would never have expected that.
Another very positive step forward has been the approval of our application for charitable status. We have also had planning permission granted for a coffee shop; the idea being to establish GLO Coffee as a place in the heart of Offerton for people to gather as community, train for employment, provide internet access for homework clubs and more. We're just waiting to see what's going to happen with the extremely run down precinct where the coffee shop would be. There are all sorts of discussions going on as to its future and we want to be wise as to the right thing to do next.
From the start we have been blessed with a fantastic team. A number of people, with very different gifts and skills, had previously been in touch with All Saints' to say they felt called to be part of something similar to The Message Trust's Eden network but wanted to serve the wider community rather than focusing solely on young people. As a result, we had a team on hand from the offset; people who come from the area – or moved into it – all of whom want to be part of this new thing of God.
As far as we are concerned we are doing Kingdom work. If people become Christians as a result of it, I don't mind where they go to church because if it's with us, great, if it's with another church that will disciple them, that's great too.
All I want to do is make sure that anyone who responds to the Gospel through us has the opportunity to become part of a discipling community. What I'm concerned about is that we are faithful to honour Christ in our worship and all we do but our time of worship in itself is not going to be primarily missional at all. You can't disciple somebody solely in public worship.
The Lab is a missional community of young adults in Newport, South Wales. Team leader James Henley explains more about its ministry and the development of its work as a fresh expression on the Alway estate.
We want people to feel that they can be part of The Lab no matter where they're from or what they believe. We try to be as welcoming and open as possible for people who are exploring their faith or who aren't used to church at all.
The Lab is made up mainly of people between the ages of 18 and 30, many of whom are students. We would describe ourselves as an experimental form of church but basically we're still a group of people trying to follow Jesus together.
The Lab was initiated by the Bishop of Monmouth five years ago in order to develop a church community of students and young adults in Newport who would otherwise not have contact with a traditional parish church. It involved trying to be church in a different way. At first we used to meet in a pub but now our gathering takes place on Sunday evenings in the hall of St Paul's City Centre Church in Newport City Centre. We also have a weekly community meal in which people take it in turns to cook and serve each other.
Things developed four years ago when The Lab began work in the Alway estate on the edge of Newport, identified as one of the most deprived areas in Wales. According to the 2001 census, nearly 50% of the population of Alway and the surrounding area is under the age of 25. Our aim was to form a residential community of young adults who would invest their time in the local community and build relationships with its young people.
The Diocese of Monmouth offered us a vicarage there and in September 2008, a group of four of us moved in and started to develop links with the community. At first there was suspicion because the local people found it very odd that we should want to make our home in Alway. Slowly but surely they grew accustomed to us but it has been hard at times. Unlike the approach of traditional evangelistic thinking we have not put on big events and asked people to come along to them. Instead our mission strategy has always been to be as pragmatic as possible and simply join in wherever we see God at work.
For instance, the parents of younger children in the area asked us if we could run some sort of summer holiday club. We did, and lots of families came along to join in. As a result we've had a lot more contact with the mums and dads.
What we do in Alway is constantly changing and expanding as new initiatives are developed and old ones are expanded. At the moment we are involved in youth work and a chaplaincy project at the local high school; primary and secondary school assemblies and RE lessons; youth and children's work in partnership with Bishpool Methodist Church and detached Youth Work. St Teilo's Church (Church in Wales) and Bishpool Methodist Church have been tremendous in working with us and building up contacts on the estate.
As a result of the partnership between these two different denominations we are accountable to both of them through different structures which have been created to support us. We also love to work closely with and support other local churches as well. The Lab is supported financially by the Church in Wales and the Methodist Church, though we also receive grants and funds from various organisations with further donations coming from Lab members and supporters. I am paid by the Diocese to work full-time as project leader.
The team has grown since we first got off the ground. Four people are now based in the old vicarage; me and my wife now live just down the road in another 'Lab' house. From September we will be taking on another youth work student who will be with us for three years and we also have funding for two gap year students to work full-time with the Lab.
One of the challenges we have encountered is people being interested in spirituality and faith – but as individuals not as part of a group. We think that perhaps this is the direction youth culture is going, as we seem to be meeting lots of young people whose reliance is not on a particular friendship group.
The other challenge is to marry up the gifts of the young adults who join us at Alway with the needs of the estate. Different people bring different skills so it's important to monitor who's doing what and where because things change. Our missional intention has always been to form relationship; if something looks like it's stagnating we are not afraid to put a stop to it and try something else.
In the next year or so I'd really like to see us developing some kind of church or forms of church with the groups of young people in this area. I'd also like us to build on the work we have just started with families. The long-term vision that we are exploring is what it would look like to plant a second Lab community in another area of Newport.
Part of the Welsh religious heritage is that the country was originally evangelised by small missional communities of monks. It seems fitting now that we are attempting to be part of a new wave in mission by essentially doing the same. That's inspiring and challenging!
Sanctuary is described as a 'safe place for British Asians or anyone interested in exploring eastern and western spiritualities in Christ.' Leader Pall Singh tells how it has developed since featuring on expressions: the dvd – 1: stories of church for a changing culture.
The story started 11 years ago when we set up a team to organise a place where people of all faiths or none could find unconditional love, acceptance and forgiveness. I was already involved with the work of East and West Trust as a director and a group of us started to meet for Sanctuary services in Shirley, Solihull.
We decided on it as a venue because it is outside the main Asian areas of the city and so seen as a safe and secure place for east and west to discover Christ without losing their cultural identity. It has provided the space for people to belong before they believe and realise that Christianity is more than just a 'white man's faith'. Three years ago, Sanctuary moved 'home' to St Martin's Church in Birmingham city centre and its services take place in the Arts Café there.
Since the Fresh Expressions DVD came out, I have done some fine tuning along the way but there hasn't been any radical change as such because Sanctuary has a very clear focus and we have tried to make a strong statement with that. We used to say it was 'for British Asians, their families and friends' but now we describe it as an 'Asian-style' service. That makes it more inclusive in the sense that anyone could say, 'I'd like to go to that'. We didn't want to rule people out just because they were non-Asians.
Of course there is then a slight danger that the many people who are attracted to the eastern spirituality that we present in Christ may, in turn, become the majority and we would lose our focus on who Sanctuary is really for. There are plenty of churches in Birmingham catering for people who aren't British Asians but it's clear that Sanctuary is a fusion of the east and west and a bridge between the two in terms of culture and spirituality and ethnicity. Now we have Asian and non-Asian people attend along with those drawn from the Afro-Caribbean community.
We are confident that a person from another background can come along to Sanctuary to pray and worship with us and feel it's a safe place. I think we have tried to protect that ethos from the start. Interestingly we've found that the people who couldn't cope with Sanctuary were Christians who couldn't get their Sunday morning charismatic 'fix' as our focus was too much on people outside the Church. Sadly, as a result of this situation, some Christians left – with our blessing. For many Christians there was a false assumption that Sanctuary would be a place where people would go temporarily for six months or a year but after that they would 'become like them' and move on to so-called real church. We have tried to be consistent in our calling but it has been difficult and hard at times to keep moving forward.
Some have been with us since the start of the Sanctuary journey and they remain very committed to it. Others have joined us along the way. There are those who have really grown in terms of their faith being deepened, people who previously have had little or no experience of church outside of Sanctuary at all. It may not be a large number but they would never have fitted in a traditional church because spiritually – as well as culturally – it would have put them off. Personally Sanctuary has also become a very special place because my two sisters came along, came to faith and were baptised.
We've had people come to visit us from different places, groups or denominations to see what we do but we make it clear that we are not 'selling' a package as such and it won't work in every context. Some who have come here have been baptised, felt confirmed in the faith and then moved on somewhere else. That's fine too; we are not here to build an empire.
We are in the process of developing more culturally relevant Asian resources in partnership with groups such as South Asian Concern and CMS – particularly focusing on prayer, meditation and building the bridge between east and west. We are trying to explore different avenues because discipleship for us is not just a case of, 'Let's do the Alpha course.'
The idea is that these resources could be given to any British Asian or anyone who would connect with that style. We are in the process of doing another CD and a resource for churches to use called Seasons of the Soul. To help us go deeper in our faith in Birmingham we have a monthly, midweek Sanctuary Family Meeting at which we have a meal, discuss the way forward and study Scripture. This coming weekend at Greenbelt we will also be providing Sanctuary-style worship with the Sanctuary team. We will have a sitar player there and also offer Asian sweets during prayer as a symbolic way of explaining how Jesus brings joy into times of sorrow and pain.
Sanctuary has inspired something of a similar nature in Canada through a group of musicians called Aradhna. One of their members lives in Toronto and the group were looking at what to do there. After a trip to the UK when they came to visit us, they went to see their minister who gave them a copy of the fresh expressions DVD with Sanctuary on it and suggested it might be something they could look at developing. They said, 'But those people are our friends! We've been there…' So the whole thing came together.
I work part-time as Mission Partner with CMS and the other half of my time is spent with an ecumenical, community-based ministry, The Lozells Project. Finance is always a challenge for Sanctuary but it's not just the financial support that's needed by a fresh expression of church; it's also the prayer support. We are so blessed to have CMS Link churches pray for us around the country and they give generously towards our ministry.
In the autumn we will be looking at ways in which we can be even more effective. One of our main challenges is in developing more of a worship group. Somehow we've managed to resist the idea of someone turning up with a guitar to do Matt Redman songs but now we need to establish worship which is appropriate for us.
There is a regular team of five involved in planning Sanctuary, we meet every fortnight but there is also a second 'layer' of people involved as a core group who are very much part of the Sanctuary family. During the service we try to get everyone involved in some way in the different themes.
Another area that we're looking at is leadership and the next generation. It can often be seen that a fresh expression starts with someone who is a visionary, I was that visionary for Sanctuary and now it's a question of passing that baton on to others – not only to the team but also to others who feel they can develop in that for the future. Maybe it will be a mixture of the two; it's good to have someone home-grown from within but we've also got to have people from the outside coming in.
Support from the wider church is vital to us. We get that support from the Diocese of Birmingham, St Martin's, CMS and its link churches and Tom and Judi Walsh of The Navigators UK. On Sunday 30 October at our Diwali celebration, we're also hoping to have the Bishop of Birmingham, Rt Revd David Urquhart, speaking at Sanctuary for the first time.
The Lounge at Costa in Woodbridge, Suffolk, has changed 'shape' in recent months since it featured on expressions: making a difference. What does it mean for the future? Dave Gardner, vicar of St John's, Woodbridge, explains more.
The Lounge – based in Costa Coffee at Woodbridge, Suffolk – was not planned as a fresh expression of church but it came about as a result of the relationships that St John's had developed over the years with Costa staff.
It was a great success as it developed. People came and the events were of a good quality but then it became clear that many of those visitors were Christians fed up with their traditional churches. They wanted a community that seemed less structured and distant from the established church, even though The Lounge was born out of – and accountable to – a 'traditional' church.
During the Autumn of 2010 there were no meetings at Costa as we had no leadership in place to take on the work and we were also using J John's Just 10 series adapted for use in our congregations at 9am, 11am and especially at 7pm (Café Church). We let the Lounge take a break as it is sometimes right to cease or at least pause a ministry to allow the right time for it to be reborn in the Lord's timing.
The Just 10 series was strongly evangelistic and it is the Café Church Team that often provides the seedbed for a lot of the missional activity of St John's. At the end of the Just 10 series we felt it right to put on Alpha@Costa starting in January; two things were very important to that – relationships with the staff and seeking to listen rather than impose. The key person has been the assistant manager and she has recommitted her life to Christ and started to attend one of our congregations on a regular basis.
It was really exciting doing Alpha at Costa as various people would wander in alongside a core who attended most sessions. It was particularly pleasing to have some older teenagers attend. An important step we took was to have a very small tight team and to say to the rest of the Church not to come unless the person they invited would only come if they did. As a reasonable sized church for our area we can easily fill Costa with Christians so we had to be very clear about this!
A number made a prayer of commitment and recommitment (including the assistant manager) and out of these we had two baptisms and three confirmations in May. These took place at Café Church in St John's but the baptisms were outside in a birthing pool. The style was very contemporary and the church was absolutely packed. Since then there has been a small group meeting with one of the Alpha group leaders.
At the end of this month, on Sunday 28 August at 5pm we are having our first open 'The Lounge' which will include jazz music, DVD, short testimony and lots of relationship building. It is too early to call this a missional community and a couple from the Church is considering the possibility of taking on the leadership of The Lounge or whatever emerges. We also hope that some of those who were on the edge of Alpha@Costa might come along. We might even consider another Alpha course if that is what is required! These are exciting days. 'The Lounge' might become a pilot missional community but once again we are seeking to listen rather than impose.
We also have a men's group called men@stjohns but this too is in the very early stages of development and has been birthed out of another initiative using John Eldridge's 'Fathered by God' course. We are hoping this will become more missional and are currently looking to hold this in a non church venue – at the local wildlife centre – where we ran the course previously. It is a monthly community where men can gather and build relationships with each other and consider what it means to be a Christian man in the real world.
